To me the book is like having a kid. I have to let it go out in the world, and great things will happen. Maybe they won't, but it has to keep on moving.

Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.

When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.

Mercy Watson is a pig. She lives with Mr. and Mrs. Watson, who are not pigs. I had that basic premise, but I couldn't make it work. I would come back to it, try it, see that I was failing, and put it aside.

[He] had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.

The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.